SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Mathematician Keith Devlin writes about how the capabilities to work with maths have changed since the late 1960s. He summarizes what he considers to be the essential skills and knowledge that people can focus on as more and more is turned over to software.
The shift began with the introduction of the digital arithmetic calculator in the 1960s, which rendered obsolete the need for humans to master the ancient art of mental arithmetical calculation. Over the succeeding decades, the scope of algorithms developed to perform mathematical procedures steadily expanded, culminating in the creation of desktop and cloud-based mathematical computation systems that can execute pretty well any mathematical procedure, solving—accurately and in a fraction of a second—any mathematical problem formulated with sufficient precision (a bar that allows in all the exam questions I and any other math student faced throughout our entire school and university careers).
So what, then, remains in mathematics that people need to master? The answer is, the set of skills required to make effective use of those powerful new (procedural) mathematical tools we can access from our smartphone. Whereas it used to be the case that humans had to master the computational skills required to carry out various mathematical procedures (adding and multiplying numbers, inverting matrices, solving polynomial equations, differentiating analytic functions, solving differential equations, etc.), what is required today is a sufficiently deep understanding of all those procedures, and the underlying concepts they are built on, in order to know when, and how, to use those digitally-implemented tools effectively, productively, and safely.
Source : What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to be More Widely Known?
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Tuesday February 06 2018, @09:41AM
It seems to me that your grasp of probability is lacking as well.
Just because you can narrow options down with only 2 possible answers does not make probability 50%.
Many toy guns are made now with either unrealistic shapes, shiny plastics, and/or fluorescent colors... Specifically to make them identifiable as a toy and prevent tragic mistakes. To say that half the guns are toys is to commit suicide if your life depends on the situation.
As for being unloaded or having the safety on? (From: http://www.ibtimes.com/accidental-gun-deaths-involving-children-are-major-problem-us-2250568 [ibtimes.com] )
Again, assuming unloaded or guns with the safety on to have 50% odds is reckless. And while 1.7m children live in those households is a small percentage compared to children overall, many live in households without guns. Of the ones living with guns, a safe assumption would be that people willing to take the proper safe steps of keeping their gun unloaded, with the safety on, would most likely store the guns in a place where the children can not access them in the first place.
When you consider that police encountering children with guns are usually responding to a report of a crime in the area (including violent threats to other community members,) the probability of an actual threat to the police is quite high.
I am not a police apologist, I abhor the authoritarian attitude that they take far too often... But if they shoot in a threatening situation when someone has a gun pointed at them, adult or child, I would not blame them. Place the blame where it is deserved... On the people that provided the child with the gun, without regard to proper safety, or the attitude that made them think it is ok to actually point a gun at an officer.
AND GET A BETTER GRASP OF PROBABILITY TOO!!!
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P